A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back

by Bruce Schneier

Immediately after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, Southern states enacted voting restrictions that didn’t specifically mention race, but that nonetheless predominantly affected Black Americans. These included poll taxes that the poorest couldn’t afford to pay; rules that only enfranchised people whose grandfathers were qualified to vote before the Civil War; and—as previously mentioned—devilishly designed, selectively administered, capriciously judged literacy tests. Several of these hacks were only banned after passage of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment (which was ratified in 1964), the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1966 US Supreme Court ruling in South Carolina v. Katzenbach. After key parts of the Voting Rights Act were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, these tactics returned, most commonly in the form of voter ID laws. In Alabama, for example, potential voters must present a state-issued photo ID or be turned away from the polls. Seemingly a simple requirement, it doesn’t play out so simply in Alabama. Close to 25% of eligible voters live over ten miles from a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office, and many don’t own a car. These are poorer citizens in the state, and they disproportionately reside in minority communities. State authorities then tried to close thirty-one DMV offices (which issue both driver’s licenses and non-driver identification cards); the offices on the chopping block were all located in the six counties where African Americans compo...